Latitude 2011 Arts Round-Up

Unlike its peers, Latitude is a festival which focuses less on warm beer and music, and more on a hugely ambitious spread of arts – including visual and performance art, dance, literature and theatre.

Back in March, we blogged about the Latitude Contemporary Art Prize 2011, a competition which saw five artists create pieces to adorn Latitude’s magical, labyrinthine woodlands.

Miraculously back at our desks having witnessed a kaleidoscopic array of dyed sheep, rain, art, culture and cider, we can reveal that the winner of the prize was Andy Harper with his mesmerising, spherical work, An Orrery For Other Worlds.

Andy Harper An Orrery for Other Worlds

The busy, vibrant piece was suspended from a tree, gently spinning in the breeze as though to emphasise its supernatural qualities.

Delaine Le Bas’ Shed

The other work was a somewhat mixed bag – ranging from Alice Anderson’s Monolith – a pillar of dolls hair and wax – to the brilliantly titled The World Turned Upside Down in the Cathedral of Erotic Misery (After Kurt Schwitters), by Delaine Le Bas – a shed structure which, to DW, recalls a cross teenagers bedroom wall, adorned with such , ahem, provocative statements about “fear” and “money”.

Having arrived on Saturday, DW was sad to miss Soupa’s presentation of Stuart Evers’ short story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking which took place on Friday. Prior to the event, Soupa had invited people to submit their own smoking-based stories and illustration for the book, which was designed by Soupa’s Jo Spencer live on stage.

The live book designing saw Spencer create a visual book to record her experience of the set, alongside four music and spoken word performers.

Graham Dolphin’s Gates

Elsewhere consultancy Made In Fallon were controlling an installation on the festival lake, projecting any one of three animations onto a screen made of water. Yes, water.

Festival-goers could make out the 10m x 3m screen every evening as they crossed a footbridge on return to their campsites.

Water from the lake pumped into a metal disk disperses it into a semi-circle shape which is fine enough to refract light.

The consultancy originally worked with the BBC on a similar piece for Latitude in 2009 but have since been asked to develop it by promoter Festival Republic.

Looking to depth for inspiration, to create what appear to be 3D holographic images, Made in Fallon created one of three sets.

Another was made with Jotta – which helps forge collaborations in design – and this looked at synergy as a theme and how two or more images can be brought together.

‘The third one we wrote around the theme Night Light. We went out, shot still life and passed light through it. Anything black acts as negative space and you can see through,’ says Made in Fallon creative producer James Lowrey who adds the piece is likely to develop again. ‘We could be VJing with it next,’ he says.

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I agree. The globe was mesmerising from every angle – even underneath – although the stewards told me not to brush the wire underneath it. Even greater is that Harper attended our university, Middlesex! The shed was also very interesting. I loved the music in the video. Did remind me of Chucky, however 🙂